How long I’ll stay remains to be seen

I’m charmed by the attitude of everyone I meet, a complete contrast to London, and equally contrasting is the cost of living. I’m currently shelling out less than 25% living expenses compared to an identical apartment in the center of London. However, I do feel disconnected already. Be it because I’m yet to form a network here or yet to discover my new local, I find myself contemplating the two hour drive down to a friends’ in London most weekends, and much more than I’d anticipated.

Working from home

One of the things I love about being a freelance designer is being able to work from anywhere. I’m one of those people that can sit with a laptop and an internet connection on a busy train and still manage to focus completely on my work, but equally I appreciate the benefits of my office space in Chichester and am glad to have been able to set up a decently-sized home office in Nottingham as well.

I always find that clients tend to prefer working with people from the same local area, but more and more I’m struggling to understand why. I have a client 200 miles away that I see more often than most of my clients who were located less than a mile away, and with mobile phones, Skype, Twitter, email, Dropbox, BaseCamp, etc. There simply isn’t any need to be in the same town these days. I won’t usually even contemplate taking on a job until I’ve met the client in person, but that doesn’t mean we need to be from the same area at all, I regularly drive across the country to meet people and in all honesty I welcome it, I don’t get to see enough of this country outside of work.

I’m happy I’m here. That doesn’t mean I’ll be here forever, but in this day and age, why should it?